Search

Unemployment Worse Than When Apartheid Ended

Unemployment Worse Than When Apartheid Ended

We may have sunshine and wide skies, but man are we miserable as a country?

Unemployment rate In South Africa Higher Than In USA During The Great Depression

So glum that we are now the fifth-most-miserable nation in the world. The Cato Institute in the US has released its “misery index” for this year and South Africa has jumped to fifth position from 10th last year.

The reason for this is an unemployment rate that is higher than that in the US during the Great Depression. South Africa’s unemployment rate as of the last quarter of 2015 was 24.5%. That figure now stands at 26.7%.

“Unemployment in South Africa is worse now than it was when apartheid ended in 1994,” the study states.

Professor Darma Mahadea, at the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, has studied the economics of happiness and believes that South Africans are not seeing too much joy and prospects for the future appear bleak for many.

“Money is a potential root to happiness, although too much of it can have a negative effect,” he said. “As people become tied to paying off debt and working long hours, they become more stressed and their health is affected.”But there is a bright side, No1 on the list is Venezuela, a country struggling with an inflation rate of 275%. But, unlike Venezuela, we don’t have shortages of beer and toilet paper.